Amy Gesenhues on November 20, 2014

 

According to Facebook, the number of videos posted by SMBs has nearly tripled since last year, with the number of companies posting videos nearly doubling in the same amount of time. The social network reports more than 800,000 small to medium sized businesses posted over three-million videos during September alone. Of the three million videos posted by the SMBs, 84 percent were uploaded outside of the U.S. After breaking news earlier this year that it has been averaging over a billion video views a day since June, Facebook continues to deliver more video to its desktop and mobile users. (Facebook claimed 65 percent of its video views were happening on mobile back in September.) Facebook’s surge in video views can be attributed to its autoplay feature, allowing videos to play automatically as a user scrolls through their newsfeed. While Facebook’s video metrics are impressive, many question whether the social network’s video views represent a valuable engagement metric since video views are not user initiated. ComScore’s co-founder Gian Fulgoni expressed his own skepticism last month when his company released reports that Facebook desktop video views had surpassed YouTube. “While there’s reach advantage for auto-play, there’s an issue as to whether you’re getting good engagement. You’re getting good engagement from user-initiated (video on YouTube) by definition,” said Fulgoni.